On October 15th, I start playing The Good Life. Its on Xbox Game Pass, so I figured I’ll just give it a try for fun. It features Naomi Haywood, a journalist in crippling debt who needs money fast. She arrives in Rainy Woods with a hatred for “country bumpkins” and a slow run speed. Her first line is her hit catchphrase: “Goddamn hellhole.” The narrator mocks her relentlessly for supposed shallowness, in a way that starts to feel cruel almost instantly.

Slowly, the game opens up and my initial frustrations vanish. When Naomi turns into a cat, she can leap over fences and explore the full map of the game. When she turns into a dog, her run speed increases. Its starting to get really fun. However, I can already tell this isn’t a game I want to sit down and play on the couch for hours. I want this mobile, so I can easily stop playing at any given moment without worrying about finding a save point. I give in and buy the game on my switch for $40. The quality of the visuals is worse, but nothing that particularly bothers me. I start to replay the prologue and finish up sidequests faster. This, initially, gives me more money.

There’s several meters to keep track of. A food meter, a health meter, a stamina meter, an awake meter, and an invisible stress meter. Health meter shouldn’t be confused with HP. The instant the prologue ends, I go to eat some food to rebuild Naomi's food meter. However, it was too many sweet foods too soon. There's a cracking sound and I'm informed Naomi has a toothache. This cuts one of my stats, health, in half. I go to the merged Hospital/Vet. The doctor makes me pay $150 to fix my tooth. I now have less money on this playthrough than I did on the Xbox playthrough.

Problems escalate. Naomi's overall health meter (which I initially assumed was the stress meter) is at 0. This makes her more vulnerable to illness. I step outside of Naomi's house. As the game is loading, it informs me Naomi has caught a cold. Once the village actually loads up, I can see that its raining. A cold cuts Naomi's stamina in half, making it harder to run. Cold Medicine is also $150.

I start running around the map, trying to find opportunities to make money. I learn something interesting about the fast travel system. If you use the shrines to teleport, you can travel without any problems or consequences. If you try to fast travel using the map itself (which only lets you go directly to your house, tbf), it will add to your invisible stress meter and result in a headache. This impacts her Awake meter. If the Awake meter falls to zero, she'll pass out. Fixing a headache also costs $150.

I look online for ways to make money. At this point in the game, there's three plot paths I can progress down, labelled Route A, B, and C. You can do them at any time and you aren't even stuck on them once you pick one to do. I learn that when you finish Route A, an easy minigame opens up that nets you $750 a day.

It's here that I first read the words “DrinKing game.” The reddit and steam forums seem to be consistently bemoaning whatever it might be. I assume it's a pop quiz of some kind and brush it off- I’ll look up the answers later.

Route A is pretty fun, all things considered. I learn how to ride sheep. Unlocking the sheep lets you go even faster on the map, without worrying about your stamina. I go through sheep riding challenge courses, which eventually leads me to a castle. A knight in a squeaky voice gives me a puzzle to solve, which requires me to look at some paintings of local residents and figure out which one is fully accurate to the residents. I teleport back to the village, double check some faces, and then return to the knight. The knight opens up the gate. At this point, I'm locked into Route A and can't do the rest of the game until I finish this story beat. At the castle, Naomi is transported to the distant past. As part of the quest, she needs to smuggle some old whiskeys back to the present. To get to the castle basement, you need to do another sheep riding challenge, followed by slowly carrying some kegs from one side of the room to another.

A drunk vicar enters the room. He won't let me leave unless I beat him in a drinking minigame. He… is the DrinKing.

DrinKing requires you to balance a ball/(beer bottle?) on a plank, allegedly a visual for keeping your sobriety. If the ball falls off within ten seconds, its a game over. You have to survive five different rounds of this game before you can progress.

I fail consistently for an hour.

I return to the forums, searching for help. According to all these DrinKing game threads, alcohol medicine can be used to make the challenge easier. I also see a comment that says “Its not that hard on keyboard, not sure what everyone’s problems are. This game has a lot of issues, but this isn’t one of them.” I briefly, in my darkest of hearts, consider if a Steam version would be a better experience before I toss away the thought. I’m too deep into the game now. I decide to take a risk. I reload my save to before entering the castle and go to find this medicine.

I search for an hour. The Hospital/Vet doesn't sell the medicine. The grocer doesn't sell the medicine. The witch in the woods doesn't sell the medicine.

The clothing store sells the medicine. Mercifully, its only $7 each.

The clothing store has a stock of three sobering up medicine. If I want more, I have to wait for them to restock. They restock every Monday/Thursday.

I decide to finish more of the game. I start Route C, where I meet more wacky characters and take their pictures, which finishes more sidequests. I manage to get a stock of 6 medicine and I return to Route A and the castle.

So when the game said the medicine "sobered up" Naomi, I assumed it would stop the ball from falling off the plank for a while. Instead, it extends the length of plank. This gives you more time to survive and make a recover if you're spiraling out of control, but not much.

I play the minigame for another hour. I make no progress.

I realize I need more medicine.

Throughout all this, I haven’t stopped thinking that comment about how easy this game was.

I look at the clock.

Its 6 am. I had started that current session around 8 pm, intercut with some chatting with my partner and googling. I had an eye doctor appointment in three and a half hours.

Despite all my frustration and anger and despair and existential dread…. I couldn’t put this game down for a second.

Its a bad game to play. The writing is clumsy and cliche, its mean to its protagonist in a way that makes it unclear if its targeting the player too. The mechanics, the game feel of it all, is utterly atrocious. But… I kind of love it. I don’t know how to explain why. There’s a real possibility I go for all the sidequests. I can't stop thinking about this game. Its... incredible.